I visited a bunch of factories in the HZ area a few years ago when I was running an e-commerce company. My impressions: incredibly smoggy on landing. Sprawling concrete mega-city that few people in the west have ever heard of. Most major websites & apps that are popular in the west are not accessible without a VPN. I found it difficult to get around and to eat. Very little English was spoken. I don’t think I saw one other foreigner there. Multiple people asked to take photos with me, as I was apparently an unusual sight to see. The cab drivers had no patience for dealing with Google translate. A few times I ended up in places outside of the city alone with no cell service. That was incredibly stressful. The food was ok (particularly dumplings), but very few options for international food, and forget about finding menus in English. The area around the lake was chill, but overall my impressions of HZ: hectic, gray, smoggy, and kinda depressing. I absolutely would not prioritize HZ as a destination for nomading.
I visited a bunch of factories in the HZ area a few years ago when I was running an e-commerce company. My impressions: incredibly smoggy on landing. Sprawling concrete mega-city that few people in the west have ever heard of. Most major websites & apps that are popular in the west are not accessible without a VPN. I found it difficult to get around and to eat. Very little English was spoken. I don’t think I saw one other foreigner there. Multiple people asked to take photos with me, as I was apparently an unusual sight to see. The cab drivers had no patience for dealing with Google translate. A few times I ended up in places outside of the city alone with no cell service. That was incredibly stressful. The food was ok (particularly dumplings), but very few options for international food, and forget about finding menus in English. The area around the lake was chill, but overall my impressions of HZ: hectic, gray, smoggy, and kinda depressing. I absolutely would not prioritize HZ as a destination for nomading.